Living, Learning, Looking.

Menu

Month: January 2016

Nothing better I like than to get up late and have a lazy breakfast on a Sunday and one of the pleasures is to listen to Desert Island Discs and this morning it was Bill Gates took to the island. There is a vast back catalog to listen to.

As our house is on the market I am having to think about what and where my future space will be and with that in mind and a viewing taking place early in the day lent to a quick scan of the bedroom to see what could be taken out of the house and to our local recycling centre, charity shop or tip. I have decided that every time I leave the house I want to remove at least one item until I have what I feel is a manageable, minimal amount of stuff that will come with me and as I move around can be easily transportable. I am considering looking at a mini-survival kit kind of set up with only things that I can carry and then as a backup the rest can be stored at family or friends houses until I have found somewhere to settle.

Much of my calculation for where boils down to money as it does for everyone, whether that be a mansion or an studio but having had my eyes opened to downsizing the latter is going to be more likely. Another consideration is living in shared space I am hoping to avoid this but if I have to then want the minimum stuff to have to cart about. I also want to investigate all possible options and some of the things I have come up with are house sitting and building guardian to name two. I have no idea whether this would be a suitable method finding shelter but the one thing I do know is that I never want a mortgage again.

I have a lot of ideas about alternative home owning but land and planning permissions are always going to be an issue. But with a creative mind and some good luck who knows what might happen I have that to look forward to or maybe I should go where the weather suits my clothes..

I’ll keep this brief. Slightly behind on the task list front although 70% success is a reasonable record over the last two days I feel. I realise that this is probably like watching paint dry for you the viewer but for me it is a reminder and also the final outcome will be purely academic to anyone but me. However it is interesting to me to see how I work best and I am taking not of rough times to see if this has any baring on my productivity. There is plenty of stuff out there on the internet advising on how to run ones life, business etc but I thought I would just see where my lists take me.

I have a bit of a routine when I go out for my daily walk which goes something like on the uphills I listen to podcasts and on the downhills, which is on the way home thankfully, I take the earplugs out and I believe the phrase is ‘be in the moment’. It’s funny how I find the act of walking very meditative in a way that I could never just sit in a quiet room and meditate like I have been told in the past would be ‘good’ for me, but tramping the miles seems to make it totally natural and I can just switch off finding that I can just float along unaware of location until it becomes apparent that I need to either do something like open a gate or mind out for traffic. Alternatively often going out with a problem on my mind can result in a solution that can be thought through in a logical and with clarity that I don’t usually get in normal daily life. Also being out in the environment helps the mental state and in these short, dark days of winter with the daily change in the quality of light it helps to remember that better days are just around the corner. In fact I often think at this time of year when being buffeted by the winds relentlessly or soaked in yet another deluge that soon I will be putting on sun cream and be out walking in t-shirts. However we are receiving a lashing from the tail end of storm Jonas at the moment and todays walk is not going to be fun or probably productive.

I have long wondered about the journeys people took long before any forms of mass transit where progress was purely from ones own propulsion. Even in my lifetime I have witnessed a change in how we comprehend travel. Most people use to live close to their work and would on the whole stay within their communities, whereas now travelling to and from work takes up a larger portion of out lives than it ever did. Then travelling a couple of miles seemed like a major undertaking whereas now contemplating visiting friends measured in many tens of miles is not even given a moments thought.

All in all I hope to carry on my daily walks where ever I end up as I get great enjoyment from it and if you don’t do it give it a try whether that be exploring your own neighbourhood or just getting off the bus one stop early on your way to work. You never know what you may find.

Well as the picture says I have carried out 500 walks since joining up with Runkeeper, which I hadn’t realised until the last few days. Most of these have been carried out in the last three years but having this info has helped in the drive to get fitter. Virtually all the activity has been through walking as that is something that can be done anywhere and with no need for stuff. However this year I am going to see about getting out on a bike. Which will be somewhat challenging due to lots of hills.

Not sure why but using the digital task managing seems to be more productive at the moment but I am setting more tasks to be carried out, so 70% is pretty good in my book. I have been pondering how much I want to put into this as there are many processes and systems out there to daze and confuse. The fact there are all these different varieties only just leads to more inertia to get things done. Time spent trying to work out how they work and getting the best effect seems to be befuddling, so hey I’m just keeping it simple.

I have decided to extend the test for a bit longer so I can have a go with Omnifocus, as recommended by a friend, although I am having my doubts as to the level of commitment needed by it for just daily tasks. I will report on this next week. It feels like I am getting to the point where I am starting to wain as in the past I have always flown by the seat of the pants mode and the concerted effort required to stay on the straight and narrow is draining. You may think this is rather verbose but I feel that ‘we’ rarely actually look at our lives from this level of contemplation, usually down to having to just get on with work, life or whatever it happens to be. But I think this doesn’t take huge amounts of energy and if it can help clear the mind as it has been said the memory is not good for this stuff but better at doing the analytical work. It would seem a good process to go through to make sure we are heading to where we want to do. I am a strong believer in common sense and to me that comes from knowing facts and being mindful. Which is partly why I feel the zen of task completion is kind of what drives me on. Now on to tomorrows task plan.

Today I decided to go through the my wardrobe and see what I could downsize. Do I really need 32 T-shirts, 37 pairs of underwear and 28 pairs of M&S socks not to mention all the other stuff like business shirts, shorts and trousers. In my defence I used to buy clothes whilst away with work when I needed to go to a meeting or if the work over ran so I ended up with piles of new and unused multipack stuff that got put to that back of the pile. Over the years things got used but now having decided to go down the minimal route I am cutting back to two weeks worth of everything as no matter where you go there will be washing facilities even if thats in a sink 🙂

Its amazing how much space that these things take up or the lack of space. I am thinking that I might see if I can get my whole wardrobe into a small wheelie suitcase as I know that life is going to get more nomadic this coming year so portability is going to be the key. I feel that apart from the personal and sentimental stuff every thing else must go! and the smaller the footprint the better.

The trick now is to get rid of all the accumulated gifs over the years that out of a sense of duty have been kept, no longer, there off to the charity shops if it does fit in the ‘keep’ bucket. From now on if you want to get me anything it’s either going to be money, experiences or consumables like food. Why didn’t I think of this before.. well now I have seen the light I am going to make sure friends and family and on the same page.

We come into life with nothing and we go out with nothing and I am no longer going to fill the bit in the middle with STUFF, well at least only the essentials.

Oops.. well with the switch to the digital platform with iOS Notes I have fallen a bit by the way side, dunno whether this is coincident or just a bummer of a gtd day. I have to say since the update Notes has become way more useful and the fact that it has a checklist is something worth using just for that option, and it has a load more functions that Apple have aimed at productivity. However that’s not what I am here for at the moment but I think I will come back to this at a later date. Was it a 40% success or is that a 60% failure; I was a difficult day due to other constraints but it did help pointing out what I could get done in the time I had, so not all bad.

Wow, just wow.. I think the scenery is one of the stars to the film and the atmosphere of the bleakness but yet the beauty of it. I was going to say that there are few wildernesses left and the the world of the unknown is rapidly dwindling however there are still places that are hazardous to humans and the film catches that. I’m not going to review it as I am a strong believer in making ones own mind up rather than listening to critics. For me Leonardo has grown into a great actor and certainly excels in this movie. There is a lot of gore but then I believe that this would have been as it was and certainly the period was captured. The supporting cast were well cast and there were a number of Brits with Tom Hardy taking the baddie role.

All in all a really good movie and if I was a betting man I would wager DiCaprio getting a gong for his performance.

On the final day of the paper note taking it proved to be a not to bad end to the week on 66.66666% and I had forgotten that I would be changing over. I have also transferred the written tasks to a spreadsheet as I want to see if there were patterns at the end of this. Yes it is nerdy to do this but it is always the case that the devil is in the detail and in order to see if there are any markers to positive or even negative behaviour. This then can be taken on to identify habits that I want to solidify. I am really looking forward to looking a the final breakdown but I am having to be patient but in the mean time I am getting things done.